Hi, my motherboard died yesterday. Warranty had just run out on it (convenient). So, I am looking at possible replacements. This is the motherboard I had. This is the motherboard I'm thinking about replacing it with. My question is: Is the hardware in these two motherboards similar enough that my kernel still boot to make the necessary changes? Or will I have to boot the liveDVD and alter my kernel in order to get back into my environment? either way, it's no big deal, I'm just trying to limit the amount of headache here. I welcome all input and suggestions here as I have not yet bought this motherboard.

Thanks!

Todd

Last edited by todd93 on Sat Jan 19, 2013 1:17 pm; edited 1 time in total

I would be surprised if everything JustWorked. However you don't need everything.

The AMD770 and the AMD990 both use the AHCI HDD driver for SATA drives, so you should get to boot and be able to build things. Thats enough.
Its unlikely that other important but not essential to boot stuff with work, e.g. networking.

Even if the boot fails, you only need boot with a liveCD, get into your chroot and rebuild your kernel. You are not looking at a whole reinstall._________________Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Also, as far as I can see the new board has basically the same sound and network chips, slightly newer version, USB-3 chip I don't know - minimal, maybe even none kernel adaptions required. At that price tag I'd probably go for the Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z (whutevz) because it has a decent Intel NIC and even X-Fi sound integrated (whatever it's worth). Coincidentally I was looking at the same boards today because I'm thinking of building a small Opteron server with ECC ram, the new FM2 parts seem to not support ECC anymore (stoopid)._________________backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic

Look at the HP Proliant Microserver before you buy a kit of parts.
In the UK, it retails for £219 from ebuyer, then HP give you £100 back.

My one is a couple of years old now. I put 5 2Tb WD Greens in it in raid5 and run a few VMs on it.
The WD Greens were a bad idea - 2 warranty replacements already. The 8Tb of storage is full of DVDs. Theres 1200 there (yes I own them all).
Have you tried finding one DVD in among 1200?

Anyway, its good value for money if it solves your problem._________________Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

One more point: The new board you've specified features Gigabyte's "Hybrid EFI," which is basically an EFI implementation built atop a normal BIOS. If you boot the board in BIOS mode, you can pretty much ignore this and it's not an issue -- and given that the description of the old board doesn't mention Hybrid (or any other) EFI, chances are this is how your installation is currently booting. Still, in the future you may want or need to boot in EFI mode, so this may be relevant. Unfortunately, my experience with Hybrid EFI has been far from good. I've written a Web page on the topic detailing my experiences. In brief, Hybrid EFI is the worst EFI implementation I've encountered. For this reason alone, I tend to think that going with another brand might be worthwhile. ASUS and its sibling ASRock seem to have decent EFI implementations (and they can still boot BIOS-mode installations), so you might look for something from them built on the same chipset that the Gigabyte board uses. I can't offer a more specific recommendation, though, since my last AMD motherboard purchase was the Gigabyte board with a Hybrid EFI that I own. (I've since bought an ASUS P8H77-I, but that's for Intel CPUs.)

Look at the HP Proliant Microserver before you buy a kit of parts.
In the UK, it retails for £219 from ebuyer, then HP give you £100 back.

Custom building from parts is so much more fun! Well this one needs to be more of an allrounder than just storage - high raid5 or 6 data throughput is welcome as well as small business mail and database service for a few clients, with web services added over time as we find the time to implement. The new Piledriver based Delhi Opterons with 45W TDP look fine for that, and are still released for AM3+, production seems to be going on until 2014. Still in planning phase though.

NeddySeagoon wrote:

Have you tried finding one DVD in among 1200?

I wouldn't even have the space for that Nice collection _________________backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic

One more point: The new board you've specified features Gigabyte's "Hybrid EFI," which is basically an EFI implementation built atop a normal BIOS. If you boot the board in BIOS mode, you can pretty much ignore this and it's not an issue -- and given that the description of the old board doesn't mention Hybrid (or any other) EFI, chances are this is how your installation is currently booting. Still, in the future you may want or need to boot in EFI mode, so this may be relevant. Unfortunately, my experience with Hybrid EFI has been far from good. I've written a Web page on the topic detailing my experiences. In brief, Hybrid EFI is the worst EFI implementation I've encountered. For this reason alone, I tend to think that going with another brand might be worthwhile. ASUS and its sibling ASRock seem to have decent EFI implementations (and they can still boot BIOS-mode installations), so you might look for something from them built on the same chipset that the Gigabyte board uses. I can't offer a more specific recommendation, though, since my last AMD motherboard purchase was the Gigabyte board with a Hybrid EFI that I own. (I've since bought an ASUS P8H77-I, but that's for Intel CPUs.)

Thank you so very much for the advice! The website you have written is a very valuable resource, and very well done, I might add! upon your advice, I have started looking at an ASUS board that looks to be very good! You can find it here. As you see, it has UEFI. I do have to apologize, I'm still in BIOS land here, haven't really dealt with EFI in any shape or form. My machine has Windows 7 installed on one 1TB disk, and Gentoo on another 1TB disk. So, with what I have read, switching to a UEFI board will not tamper with my ability to boot using MBR? Is that correct? Or will I have to alter something in order for my install to boot? Please forgive my ignorance on the subject, and once again, thank you so very much for the quite useful information!!

upon your advice, I have started looking at an ASUS board that looks to be very good! You can find it here. As you see, it has UEFI. I do have to apologize, I'm still in BIOS land here, haven't really dealt with EFI in any shape or form. My machine has Windows 7 installed on one 1TB disk, and Gentoo on another 1TB disk. So, with what I have read, switching to a UEFI board will not tamper with my ability to boot using MBR? Is that correct? Or will I have to alter something in order for my install to boot? Please forgive my ignorance on the subject, and once again, thank you so very much for the quite useful information!!

I can't speak to the ASUS board you mention, but the vast majority of UEFI boards on the market today (including the ASUS P8H77-I that I own) do support BIOS-mode booting. Thus, chances are you'll be able to boot your existing OSes with a new board in BIOS/legacy mode with minimal fuss. Note, however, that Windows tends to tie itself closely to the hardware, so "minimal fuss" with Windows could involve about a dozen reboots while it sorts out the hardware changes, and if you're unlucky a re-installation after that. This is no different from swapping one BIOS-based board for another, though. Linux generally reacts better, and you've gotten good advice on that score in this thread.

upon your advice, I have started looking at an ASUS board that looks to be very good! You can find it here. As you see, it has UEFI. I do have to apologize, I'm still in BIOS land here, haven't really dealt with EFI in any shape or form. My machine has Windows 7 installed on one 1TB disk, and Gentoo on another 1TB disk. So, with what I have read, switching to a UEFI board will not tamper with my ability to boot using MBR? Is that correct? Or will I have to alter something in order for my install to boot? Please forgive my ignorance on the subject, and once again, thank you so very much for the quite useful information!!

I can't speak to the ASUS board you mention, but the vast majority of UEFI boards on the market today (including the ASUS P8H77-I that I own) do support BIOS-mode booting. Thus, chances are you'll be able to boot your existing OSes with a new board in BIOS/legacy mode with minimal fuss. Note, however, that Windows tends to tie itself closely to the hardware, so "minimal fuss" with Windows could involve about a dozen reboots while it sorts out the hardware changes, and if you're unlucky a re-installation after that. This is no different from swapping one BIOS-based board for another, though. Linux generally reacts better, and you've gotten good advice on that score in this thread.

I just moved my old amd770 Gentoo system over to an ASUS M5A990x EVO v.2.0 to make use of a cheap Phenom II 965 I had pickup up, and since most of the drivers were the same, it went rather smoothly. Hardest part was getting a pure UEFI boot going. But that was eased by the wonderful rEFInd and all the associated documentation that Google found for me. There was a brief issue with my rtl8111/8168 NIC, but some reading here and elsewhere got that sorted quickly, as well. System is very snappy, and emerges are faster than ever with 4 cores.

I just moved my old amd770 Gentoo system over to an ASUS M5A990x EVO v.2.0 to make use of a cheap Phenom II 965 I had pickup up, and since most of the drivers were the same, it went rather smoothly. Hardest part was getting a pure UEFI boot going. But that was eased by the wonderful rEFInd and all the associated documentation that Google found for me. There was a brief issue with my rtl8111/8168 NIC, but some reading here and elsewhere got that sorted quickly, as well. System is very snappy, and emerges are faster than ever with 4 cores.

Just research whatever motherboard you plan to purchase ahead of time, and compile a kernel that includes the necessary drivers before switching boards.

Thank you so much for that input. I am very pleased with the Asus board. The problem is . . . Apparently that was not my problem. The boards CPU LED is on signifying a problem with the CPU. I do not suspect my CPU could have gone bad, I suspect it's the power supply. I have no way of knowing without a PS tester. So I have one on the way, so we'll see what the problem really is.

Okay, I'm back up and running, however, I'm having a little trouble booting, so I have chrooted into my environment, but am not sure what should be configured into my kernel. the following is the output of lspci -n, followed by the output of lspci. Any input is deeply appreciated!

What does a "little trouble booting" some error messages or a kernel panic message would be useful.
Given the info you have posted, you could follow kernel-seeds.org.

I'm having a kernel panic, and I have used and followed kernel-seeds.org for some time now, but I am not sure after posting lspci-n what needs to be configured into my kernel in order to make it work. I am suspicious that it's a sata controller issue, but I'm not sure. according to the output I get when I post lspci-n here: http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/index.rhtmlx everything should work.

Please tell us the text of your panic, or post a photo from a mobile phone/digital camera.

There are several panic messages you could have and helpers guessing is no help at all.

NeddySeagoon,

Please allow me to apologize. after attempting to boot again, I saw that the gentoo hard drives had been changed from "sda" to "sdb". I feel rather foolish, I edited my grub.conf to boot "sdb3" instead of "sda3" and it worked beautifully, I'm actually in my environment replying.

I am, however, having another issue that I am attempting to clear up. I am now getting a message that my "gentoo hard disk is reporting health problems". I never got that error before, so I am attempting to search out the issue, and am exhausting everything I can before posting a new thread on the subject. Let me assure you, though, that I will indeed post the error and all information regarding it in a new thread, and in the proper place.

I appreciate all of your help, and I am going to call this one "SOLVED" as I am back up and running!